The invention relates to machines for dispensing ice cream, crushed ice drinks or the like to the public, and specifically it relates to the hand-actuated plunger-type dispensing taps for such machines.
Hand-actuated dispensing taps in which the shutoff member is a plunger, as used in machines for dispensing ice cream or similar substances such as, e.g. crushed ice drinks, are worked by hand both to open and close them by turning a lever to raise and lower the plunger. The necessity of returning the plunger by hand to the closed position after each dispensing operation can be a nuisance during periods of heavy public demand. This nuisance is especially acute, for example, when using machines with more than one dispensing plunger, where the operator cannot move to another plunger without first completely closing the plunger actuated previously.
It is therefore the main object of the invention to provide a device which is able to cause said plunger to be automatic returned to the closed position after each dispensing operation.
From U.S. Pat. No. 4,478,355 a soft dessert dispensing arrangement is known comprising a manually actuated dispensing lever, a plunger spring biased closed, said plunger being mechanically coupled to said dispensing lever to be moved thereby to an open position in opposition to the action of said spring means, means for holding said plunger in its lifted position, and means actuated at the end of a timing period to cause said holding means to release said plunger, thereby causing said plunger to be spring biased closed.
However, the said device cannot be fitted to existing plunger type dispensing taps without consistent structural modifications both to the taps and to the machine.
It is therefore the main object of the present invention to provide an automatic device that can also be fitted to existing plunger-type dispensing taps on ice cream dispensing machines without making any structural modification to the latter and which enables the plungers of these taps to return to the closed position automatically.
The subject of the invention is a device that can be fitted to the dispensing plungers of a machine for dispensing ice cream or the like which makes it possible, after the dispensing plunger has been raised by hand to the dispensing or open position, to execute the subsequent operation of lowering or closing this plunger entirely automatically as soon as the manual action of raising the plunger ceases. For this purpose, at the end of each plunger there is a push means fitted with a compression spring which is loaded by the raising of the plunger by means of a hand-operated lever, and which automatically moves the plunger back in the opposite or closing direction as soon as the hand releases this lever.